Tennessee Democratic Party Official: Gun Nuts Are Terrorists

I’m pretty proud of my status as a gun nut. While I know some use the term as a pejorative, I kind of like it. After all, I am nuts about firearms. Their form, their function, their everything intrigues the hell out of me. If I had my way, I’d walk into the gun store and order one of each, then shoot the crap out of them because they’re awesome.

A top spokesman for the Tennessee Democratic Party’s effort to get Phil Bredesen elected senator has said he views “white male” gun owners as “the biggest terrorist organization on the planet.”

Mark Brown is communications director for Tennessee Victory 2018, a project of the state Democratic party that’s been working exclusively on electing Bredesen. The group is hosting Bredesen for a Johnson City meet-and-greet on Thursday afternoon.

Brown’s extreme views on Republicans were showcased this summer by the Free Beacon, which identified numerous inflammatory posts on social media. In one post Brown wrote, for example, “Fuck reaching out to Trump voters, The idiots aren’t listening.”

One comment missed in the Free Beacon‘s initial review came on Facebook in 2015, when Brown stated his belief that “white male ‘Murican gun nuts” are “the biggest terrorist organization on the planet.”

Brown’s comment received zero “likes.”

Bredesen has attempted to present himself to voters as a moderate who could work across the aisle with Republicans.

Bredesen has also presented himself as a pro-gun candidate, bragging in an ad of high ratings from the National Rifle Association. (The NRA called on Bredesen to take down the ad because the rating was outdated and it now opposes him due to his changed views.)

The campaign did not respond to a request for comment on Brown’s view on gun owners and whether Brown will be at the Thursday afternoon Tennessee Victory 2018 event with Bredesen.

In fairness to Mr. Brown, his views aren’t unique among Democrats. Plenty of them believe we are somehow a grave threat to the United States. Nevermind the fact that law-abiding gun owners aren’t shooting their political opponents on baseball fields. That was a Bernie Sanders supporter.

No, if the average American gun nut were a terrorist, people like Mr. Brown would be wetting themselves to keep from offending us. You know, kind of like how they trip over themselves not to offend radical Islamists.

The fact that he and people like him will continue to pretend we’re the threat and do it so openly and brazenly gives the lie to their words. If they thought we were such a threat, they’d be a lot more polite to us, not just to our faces but on social media.

Of course, we’re not a threat. We’re certainly not a terrorist organization. For one, we’re not that organized. For another, while we all want to beat our opponents, we tend to prefer to do it at the ballot box. If we wanted otherwise, the Obama years would have been an ugly, ugly mess of assassinations, car bombings, and other horrors that would have transformed the American landscape.

None of that happened. Why? We’re not the threat and never have been.

We may be gearing up for a fight, but few of us have any interest in starting one. That alone proves Brown’s comment, even if he believes it, is bogus.

But it’s not like Democrats have ever treated most of us like we were real humans anyway.